“What do you want?” Crowley’s tone might have sounded belligerent if a flash of fear in his eyes didn’t accompany it. “I told you everything I knew last night. Did you find Juicy? Ask him about our meet?”
“Not yet.” Nate folded his arms and propped his hips against a rickety table piled with file folders. “Wanted to double-check with you before questioning him. Be sure we have the right guy.”
“What’s to double-check?” Crowley’s confidence was returning. Carefully he smoothed a hand over his crimped brown hair, his gaze flicking to Risa for a moment. “I already identified him from the photos. The rest is your job.”
“You know what else is our job, Sam?” Her voice was conversational. “Knowing when a jerk-off like you is lying to us. That comes from experience, and unfortunately we have lots of it.”
Tension settled in the man’s thick shoulders. “Listen, is he lying about meeting me there? Because that goes to figure. He’s not about to tell the truth if he thinks it’s going to get him arrested. And he probably didn’t see anything anyway. I got there before he did. Waited a couple minutes for him.”
“The details keep changing but you know what stays the same? It’s all bullshit.” Nate slapped his palm hard against the table he was leaning on. The towers of file folders started to sway. Sam’s eyes went wide and he lunged from his desk.
“Dammit, you know how long it took me to organize those?” He ran to the table in time to catch the pile that made a slow topple toward the floor. “Could use some help here!”
“Yeah, see I feel the same way.” Nate shot a look at Risa. “How about you?”
She gave a nod, watched Crowley juggle folders in a doomed attempt to save them from hitting the floor. “Yeah, we could use some help, too.” Papers spilled as one folder after another slipped from his grasp to hit the floor.
“Fuck!” Crowley kicked one of the folders in frustration. “You guys are nothing but trouble.”
“Trouble has a habit of following you around, doesn’t it, Crowley?” Nate’s tone was hard. “ ’Course you bring most of it on yourself.” He took two photos from his suit jacket pocket and tossed them on the man’s desk. “You need another look at these?”
The man barely glanced at them. “I already . . .”
“The guy you ID’d last night has been in the hospital since Sunday. So he sure as hell wasn’t meeting you in the park on Monday. You’ve been jerking me around since I caught up with you.”
“The fancy word for ‘jerking us around’ is obstruction,” Risa informed him. “That’s what we’re going to charge you with, right before we cuff you and march you out the door in front of your former employers. With that and your own admission of buying marijuana, we have enough to send you back to Somerset. And I can guarantee it will be for longer than two years this time.”
Giving up on retrieving the folders, Crowley rose, inched back toward his desk. He was sweating now. Beads of perspiration dotted his upper lip, his brow. “Okay, so none of the pics were the Juicy I met with. I figured you’d think I was lying if I said that, so I pointed at one of them.” He tried a weak smile, couldn’t quite pull it off.
Risa surveyed him consideringly. “You must really be afraid of him.”
“I told you, I . . .”
She turned to Nate. “Let’s give him one more chance. I’m betting Juicy’s number is on his cell phone. We can have him set up a meet, scoop this guy up, and end this thing once and for all.”
Crowley dropped heavily into his desk chair, looking ill. “You have no idea what he’s capable of. And he didn’t have anything to do with what happened in the park. He was only there because I was going to be there anyway so that’s where I arranged to meet him. Honest.” He looked from one of them to the other, his eyes wild. “This has nothing to do with him.”
“Convince us,” Risa advised him.
Crowley licked his lips. “This job . . . it doesn’t even pay the rent. I’m supposed to feel lucky someone will let me do their books after my last job, right? But I needed money, and I know this guy . . .”